O'Gorman: Last matchup between Reid and Coughlin?

With this likely to be Tom Coughlin’s last season as Giants head coach, why not one more matchup with his old football rival Andy Reid.

These two NFC East veterans had their teams dominate the division ever since Coughlin joined the G-Men 10 years ago.

When Reid left the Eagles it figured their rivalry was over. Then Big Andy went to Kansas City and who else showed up on the Giants schedule in Week 4 but Reid and his Chiefs.

They meet today at Arrowhead Stadium, only this time it’s Coughlin’s 0-3 Giants taking on Reid’s 3-0 Chiefs.

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What a way for one of the NFL’s better coaching rivalries to finish out.

“We don’t get caught up in the record,” Reid told the Giants press corps the other day. “They’ve got a phenomenal head coach. They’re a good football team and so we’re preparing ourselves for a good football team. That’s the bottom line.”

Reid wouldn’t even say the Giants he saw get plastered in Carolina last week when quarterback Eli Manning got sacked seven times was as pitiful a Big Blue team as he’s ever faced.

“I don’t get caught up in that,” he insisted. “I know they’re well-coached and I know they’ve got good players. I know we have a lot of work to get done and so that’s what we’re doing.

“We’re studying the Giants and we respect the heck out of them, but we’ve got to get better as a football team. That’s what we’re doing. That’s where our energy is going,” said Reid, whose Eagles welcomed Coughlin to the NFC East with a 31-17 drubbing to open then ’04 season.

Reid knows why his Chiefs are unbeaten and the Giants winless.

“You guys know why. Turnovers,” he said. “That’s a big stat in the National Football League. I understand what he’s saying there. I got it. I understand that.

“It’s important you hang on to the football. I’m not saying that in any way to disrespect anybody. I think that’s just a fact in this league.”

Reid has transformed KC from a team that had 35 giveaways a year ago when it went 2-14 to a team with no giveaways in the three games.

Another glaring fact is that Manning has been pummeled more than any QB and sacked the most. Today he has an inexperienced offensive line blocking for him against the defense with the most sacks.

Reid and Coughlin talk often during the off-season, but their only meetings when the season is on comes on days when they’re on opposite sides of the field. Like today.

“We keep it brief on game day normally, but we talk throughout the year. I have a ton of respect for him, not only as a football coach -- he’s a Hall of Fame football coach -- but also as a man. He’s a great person,” says Reid.

A good coach who is going through the toughest time of his Giants career, and still suffering the emotional sting of losing his only brother in a fall after a Giants home game.

“We talk, but usually about philosophical things,” says Coughlin, who like Reid switched conferences for his second coaching job. Coughlin built the Jacksonville franchise and turned it into an AFC playoff finalist in two years.

Now Reid is trying to rebuild an AFC franchise with a once great tradition into a playoff contender again.

Being part of NFL history helped him decide to stay in football after leaving Philly.

“I looked at it as an opportunity to work with the Hunt family,” he says. “The Hunts, the Maras, the Rooneys; these are old traditional football families from the old NFL.

“I really didn’t get caught up in the record and this and that,” said Reid. “I thought after the people that were talking to me this was an organization if the opportunity arose… I wasn’t out searching for teams… That if the opportunity arose with one of those teams I had… this was the team that was talking.

“I think every situation is different. I think that’s very important to understand. I had a great relationship, still do, with Jeffrey (Lurie, Eagles owner). We’re just one of 32 teams and they’re all different. Personally, I think he felt and I felt that change could be good.”

What hasn’t changed is the friendship and coaching rivalry with Tom Coughlin. One that will be continued on the field for the last time today.